Originally an early nineteenth century variation of a venerable English game, baseball, by the late twentieth century, had developed into America's "national pastime," a game so indelibly entwined with American culture and society that diplomat Jacques Barzun once remarked, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."

Baseball lore places the origins of baseball in Cooperstown, a small town in upstate New York, where Abner Doubleday, a West Point cadet and Civil War hero, allegedly invented the bat-and-ball game in 1839. In reality, the sport was neither new nor indigenous. The game that ultimately developed into modern baseball was in fact a modified version of rounders, an English sport imported to the colonies prior to the American Revolution. Early forms of baseball were remarkably similar to rounders. Both games involved contending teams equipped with a ball as well as a bat with which to hit the ball. In addition, both baseball and rounders required the use of a level playing field with stations or bases to which the players advanced in their attempts to score.

Baseball quickly evolved from the sandlot play of children to the organized sport of adults. In 1845, a group of clerks, storekeepers, brokers, and assorted gentlemen of New York City, under the direction of bank clerk Alexander Joy Cartwright, founded the first baseball club in the United States--the New York Knickerbockers, which played its games at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. The club was more a social association than an athletic one, providing opportunities to play baseball, as well as hosting suppers, formal balls, and other festivities. Individuals could become members only through election. By the 1850s, a number of clubs patterned on the Knickerbocker model appeared throughout the Northeast and in some areas of the Midwest and Far West.